DESCRIPTION DE L'EGYPTE. Denderah (Tentyris). Plan, élévation et coupes du Typhonium. (ANTIQUITES, volume IV, planche 32)

Original in plano etching, untrimmed, extracted from the so-called "Imperial" edition of the Description de l'Égypte ou Recueil des observations et recherches faites en Égypte pendant l'expédition française, publié par les ordres de Sa Majesté l'Empereur Napoléon le Grand.
Executed between February 1802 and 1829 by order of Napoleon Bonaparte and published from 1809 [actually 1810], it was printed in 1000 copies on watermarked laid paper "Égypte ancienne et moderne" and offered to institutions.
Light and marginal foxing not affecting the engraving, otherwise very fine condition and preservation.
DENDERAH:
The scholars executed views and surveys of the temples of Denderah (or Tentyris), a city in Upper Egypt situated 60 km north of Luxor. They rendered with exceptional graphic quality the thick and round aspect of the sculpted reliefs of the great temple of Hathor, built under the Ptolemies during the first half of the 1st century BCE. They also provided interesting views of the neighboring temples, as well as a selection of reliefs from "l'appartement du zodiaque," a chapel dedicated to Osiris and situated above the temple of Hathor. Its famous astronomical relief was discovered by General Desaix dispatched by Napoleon in 1798 but was only brought back to France by Claude Lelorrain in 1821. It is now displayed at the Louvre Museum. Another astronomical and cosmological relief covering the ceiling of the hypostyle hall of the temple of Hathor is the subject of a magnificent plate executed by Jollois and Devilliers. They documented the seven soffits (coffers) of the ceiling, an immense allegorical representation that describes several levels of knowledge: that of cosmogony, of constellations and their reflection on Earth, of the creation of Man, and of the nomes of Egypt, symbolized by 21 pairs of wings crowned with the red crown of Lower Egypt or the white tiara of Upper Egypt.


Volume ANTIQUITES, IV:
These engravings provided Jean-François Champollion with fundamental epigraphic documentation for the decipherment of hieroglyphs and inspired a lineage of archaeologists such as Mariette, Maspero and Carter who gave a new face to ancient Egypt. They aroused such enthusiasm that they gave birth to the phenomenon of Egyptomania and the orientalism of Delacroix, Fromentin, Marilhat, Decamps but also Théophile Gautier... Financiers, politicians, merchants, and diggers of all kinds would rush to the banks of the Nile in search of good deals following this rediscovery of Egypt. At the origin of Egyptology, these plates would have an immense posterity.

LA DESCRIPTION DE L'EGYPTE, IMPERIAL edition (1809-1829):
La Description de l'Egypte is one of the masterpieces of French publishing and the starting point of a new science: Egyptology. Titanic exposition of Egypt at the time of Bonaparte's conquests between 1798 and 1799, it is divided into 23 volumes including 13 volumes of engravings gathering nearly 1000 plates in black and 72 in color. The 6 volumes of plates entitled Antiquités are devoted to the splendors of pharaonic Egypt. L'Histoire naturelle is divided into 3 volumes of engravings. One volume is devoted to Cartes géographiques et topographiques while the 3 volumes : Etat Moderne present a striking portrait of Coptic and Islamic Egypt as it was seen by Bonaparte's armies of the Orient.

The "Egyptian campaign," military disaster, revealed through the engravings of the Description de l'Egypte the scientific success it had become, thanks to the some 167 scholars members of the Commission des sciences et des arts de l'Institut d'Egypte who followed Napoleon's army. The Institute brought together in Egypt the mathematician Monge, the chemist Berthollet, the naturalist Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, as well as numerous artists, engineers, architects, doctors... They were charged with rediscovering modern and ancient Egypt, showing its natural riches, and the know-how of its inhabitants.

The first edition, called "Imperial," of the Description de l'Egypte was executed in four large formats, two of them specially created for it and baptized "Moyen-Egypte" and "Grand-Egypte" formats. A specific press was built for its printing, which stretched over twenty years, between 1809 and 1829. The Imperial edition proved so popular that a second edition in 37 volumes entirely in black and without the watermark "Egypte ancienne et moderne," called the "Panckoucke" edition, was published from 1821 by the C.-L.-F. Panckoucke printing house (Paris).
The realization of this monument of erudition owes much to Baron Dominique Vivant Denon, illustrator, diplomat, collector and subsequently director of the Napoleon Museum of the Louvre who accompanied Napoleon to Egypt with numerous other scholars but decided alone to venture into the South of the country, while the other invited scientists remained confined in the Cairo region. The fabulous sketches brought back by Denon during his romantic ride gave Bonaparte the idea of sending the other members of the Institute there and thus drawing a faithful and complete portrait of the territory. Following Denon, it was therefore the greatest French scientists and artists who ventured along the Nile as far as Nubia. Among them, the painter at the natural history museum H.J. Redouté (brother of Pierre-Joseph Redouté, author of Roses), the mineralogist Dolomieu, the draftsman Joly, and the engineers Fourier and Costaz, charged with the scientific study of the ancient vestiges of Upper Egypt.
Probably for the first time brought together in such an expedition, the French scientific and artistic elite, composed of more than 160 "scholars" including nearly 50 artists, methodically studied Egypt for three years. They then realized, under the aegis and glory of Napoleon, the most vast historical, geographical, scientific, economic and ethnological analysis ever executed on a country. But it is perhaps the engravings that constituted the major technical challenge of this Description de l'Egypte, as witnessed by Yves Laissus, commissioner of the exhibition organized in 2009 by the RMN and the Army Museum at Les Invalides:
"L'illustration, 836 planches dont une soixantaine en couleurs, gravées à l'eau forte et au burin dans des formats jusqu'alors inusités (le plus grand couvre près d'un mètre carré), a nécessité la construction de nouvelles formes et cuves pour la fabrication du papier, justifié l'invention, par Nicolas Conté, d'une machine destinée à alléger la besogne des graveurs, et exigé la réalisation de nouvelles presses capables d'imprimer ces images immenses. Certaines d'entre elles ont demandé deux années de travail. Près de 200 graveurs ont reproduit sur le cuivre les œuvres de 62 dessinateurs dont 46 ont participé à l'expédition."
Rare and superb original engraving of exceptional execution and graphic quality, testimony to one of the most ambitious French editorial adventures.